Does aid (actually) aid in avoiding disasters and rebuilding after them?

Final Announcement

Winners of the “best contribution” awards:

The committee members (Jason Von Meding, Anna Konotchick, Gonzalo Lizarralde, and Faten Kikano) acknowledge the engagement of all participants and their thoughtful contributions to this debate. They determined that the winners are:

Ekatherina Zhukova First prize – best comments

1000 CAD$

Vanicka Arora Second prize

500 CAD$

Thomas Johnson Third prize

300 CAD$

Congratulations to winners!

The moderator’s opening remarks

For decades, scholars and think tanks have debated the effectiveness of aid in reducing poverty. In this debate, we will build on previous arguments about the effectiveness and value of aid, but focus on its role in disaster risk reduction and post-disaster reconstruction and recovery.

Scholars, think-tanks, celebrities, and politicians have claimed aid is crucial to prevent famines, diseases, and deaths. They argue that donors’ money can be used to solve basic problems in areas like sanitation, vaccination, education, housing, and infrastructure. Aid can also be used to fund monitoring activities and learn from interventions. More importantly, they contend that traditional markets alone cannot resolve housing and infrastructure deficits. They note that the poor are often stuck in feedback loops that economists call “poverty traps.” In other words, millions are poor precisely because they live in poverty. Slum dwellers, for instance, find it difficult to escape poverty because they pay proportionally more for services and infrastructure than wealthier citizens. Foreign aid is needed to break these vicious cycles and replace them with virtuous ones that make vulnerable people more resilient. For defenders, the real problem is lack of funds, not present mechanisms of aid. From their view, people use criticisms of aid merely as excuses to justify not donating money.

On the other hand, critics often find too much money is “wasted” on aid. For them, initiatives seldom produce positive long-term change and—in many cases—even create more damaging than desirable results. They contend that donors’ money is spent on band-aid solutions that rarely have long-term impacts. They argue that aid is largely controlled by political agendas, feeds on forms of neo-colonialism, focuses too much on technology transfer, creates dependency, and bypasses legitimate governments and authorities. They contend that aid is often based on centralized schemes produced by over-confident and idealistic decision-makers with little knowledge of what is needed “on the ground.” For them, aid is often driven by ideology, and lacks the performance incentives and accountability mechanisms found in competitive (and typically “more efficient”) markets.

For this debate, we have invited two internationally recognized experts in humanitarian assistance and interventions to defend each viewpoint.

Our panellists will present their most persuasive arguments over the next ten days, but the outcome of the debate rests in your hands. Don’t hesitate to vote immediately—you can always change your mind. Better yet, once you have cast your vote, add your voice to the debate and explain your decision.

Anna Konotchick is the Director of Housing and Human Settlements at Habitat for Humanity International for the Asia Pacific Regional Office in Manila. She leads the Housing and Human Settlements team in the following fields: construction, engineering, housing, urban planning, land tenure, disaster response, recovery and resilience. From 2014 till 2018, she was the Canaan Program Manager for the American Red Cross. She managed directly-implemented and partner-implemented projects in Canaan urban development and resilience portfolio. Prior to this, Anna worked for the World Bank, providing technical assistance on beneficiary satisfaction in the Haiti housing reconstruction. She received her BS from MIT in 2007 and two masters degrees from UC Berkeley in Architecture and in City Planning in 2013.

Dr Jason von Meding is an Associate Professor at the University of Florida and founding faculty of the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience (FIBER). Before moving to the U.S. he spent 6 years at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where he established the Disaster and Development Research Group. He obtained his PhD from the Queen’s University of Belfast in Northern Ireland, where he also spent 3 years on faculty. His research focuses on the social, political, economic and environmental injustice that causes people, across global societies but particularly in the developing world, to be marginalized and forced into greater risk of being impacted by disasters. Jason is the writer and an executive producer of the upcoming DEVIATE documentary and often contributes in more journalistic style to “The Conversation”.

The proposer’s opening remarks

Aid can improve vulnerability reduction to natural hazards, as well as the recovery process for disaster-affected communities. However, the systems to deliver aid are imperfect and require that each one of us work within our institutions – be it NGOs or governments, academic institutions, private sector, or community groups – to make it more effective, fair, and just.

However, more is needed to ensure good stewardship of those resources. Aid can and must evolve. Paradigm shifts are necessary to address the root causes of vulnerability to natural hazards. We know that structural issues and power inequalities make the poor disproportionately affected by natural disasters. This has in part spurred important social movements like climate justice. The poor occupy lands that flood more often. They have less political power to demand disaster mitigation infrastructure. True humanitarian practitioners must recognize this. We must recognize how our interventions can either disrupt unjust systems, or inadvertently be complicit with them. We must move beyond thinking of simplistic “solutions” or “projects” that narrowly focus only on the symptoms.

The question posed by the moderators deconstructs the notion that any one agent, particularly foreign “experts”, can solve poverty and vulnerability to natural hazards. A new generation of humble “double agents” is required: double agents who have the courage to recognize their complicity in the political and economic systems that cause such poverty and vulnerability to natural hazards, yet are still motivated to transform those systems. This is a collective challenge and responsibility, regardless of whether you work for an NGO, government, private sector, academia, or a community group.

The opposition’s opening remarks

I would like to begin by speaking to the gross historical injustice perpetrated against the global South by the North. Since 1492, the “development” of Europe relied on the exploitation of those it could subjugate. Any conversation about whether humanitarian aid works without establishing this context would be lacking. The dominant development story today is also one that celebrates “progress” in human societies from a Eurocentric and paternalistic perspective. Countries that have been pillaged are called poor, underdeveloped or “developing”. Beset by these labels through which crimes are concealed, Michael Perenti calls our attention to the “set of social relations that has been forcefully imposed on countries.”

So, at the outset, let us not make the false assumption of poverty as a first stage of development, or as something naturally occurring in society. Inequality and injustice underpin systems of governance, diplomacy and trade. We do not have time to deconstruct the concept of the “poverty trap” but suffice to say that my position is that both Jeffrey Sachs’ “more aid” and William Easterly’s “no aid” are different approaches to solving the wrong problem. I.e. they are both operating under status quo assumptions about poverty and inequality and development. The actual problem is located beyond any economic equation; a pathway to progress is too.

In this debate I will be arguing that humanitarian aid doesn’t really help in avoiding disasters and rebuilding after them.If we are ever to avoid disasters, we must aim much higher in reducing risk and, of course, in stopping risk creation. An ahistorical approach to disaster risk and development more broadly (such as that espoused by Bill Gates or Steven Pinker, for example) simply kicks the can down the road and assures us that we can all be winners. It’s a feel-good story. But I argue that the overprivileged, the oppressor, the elite – whatever the label – must sacrifice. I am white-western-cis-male-academic privilege personified, and an aspiring class traitor.

Most of the money spent relative to disasters is, as we know, focused on recovery. I’m sure that we all agree that additional spending on prevention is essential. But a tiny fraction of aid money actually goes to front-line local organizations – see http://newirin.irinnews.org/the-humanitarian-economy/. If we look to post-disaster scenarios, profiteers move in rapidly – often under the guise of humanitarian aid. Although humanitarian agencies are staffed by some of the most inspiring and genuine (and sometimes a tiny bit cynical) people I have ever met, as a sector it often remains steeped in the paternalistic and neo-colonial attitude of “charity”.

Charity at best provides a band-aid and at worst obscures a status quo that needs continuing structural violence in order to maximize profit. Most disturbingly, some of the most enthusiastic proponents of philanthropy continue to benefit handsomely from an exploitative system. What about fighting the system itself? This is what humanitarian aid/development practitioners were once known for. The sector must get back to challenging the status quo, rather than assenting to tyranny.

The proposer’s rebuttal remarks

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice– Dr. Martin Luther King

We seem to agree that vulnerability to natural hazards is apolitical problem that requires political solutions. Progress toward more just systems – and aid practices – is not a given, and is hard won. Like social movements in the past, it requires engaging the aid, political and economic systems at all levels, and it requires that even compromised institutions have double agents sympathetic to change. In fact, systemic political changes must be seen as part of our humanitarian goal (beyond immediate lifesaving efforts).

Secondly, we can recognize that unjust political and economic systems also exist across different geographies than binaryGlobal North versus South; they are also within nations and communities. Disasters by definition mean that local systems and institutions are overwhelmed; thus disasters are also moments when they are most vulnerable to external influence – progressive or not. As humanitarian workers, we have the mandate to work directly with marginalized communities and the disaster affected. As such, we have the opportunity and we have the agency to represent their needs when they are unable to, and to challenge unjust systems (global or local). Alternatively, any void in that discourse is easily filled by vested political and economic interests, and exacerbates existing inequalities. Humanitarians raise awareness of these needs, and call for action and change – through research and monitoring, placing resources in the hands of the vulnerable, or through quiet diplomacy. This is also precisely why repressive governments try to limittheir mobility or powers.

Disasters are precisely the time when vulnerable communities need humanitarian organizations to listen, to magnify their voice, and to provide space for them to negotiate their own recovery. The status quo will not do that for them.

The opposition’s rebuttal remarks

Anna has provided many excellent examples of the attempts of well-meaning practitioners and organizations to use aid as a vehicle for both disaster recovery and risk reduction. These achievements are fantastic – and somewhat miraculous – given that little aid actually reaches front-line communities. The system is dysfunctional, primarily through its intrinsic link to global capital.

I love the article that Anna referenced,Praxis in the Time of Empire. Ananya Roy states that “this article is written with the hope that praxis in the time of empire can turn the heart of power into a profound edge of struggle and dissent.” If we apply this to the current debate on aid in disaster recovery and risk reduction (and development, by proxy), there appears to be a case to be made for “double agents”. As I alluded to in my opening remarks, humanitarian practitioners used to be known for this.

But in the 21st Century, who are these double agents, and what do they seek to change? The “imperfect systems of aid delivery,” as my opposition suggests? In my opinion, to focus on how aid can “work better” assumes a continuation of the status quo as it relates to the economy, development, inequality and poverty. I would be delighted if the humanitarian sector was a staging ground for struggle and dissent – but most agencies are so concerned with continued funding that they cannot fathom structural change. Will they ever bite the hand that feeds?

We must also not forget that we are in the midst of a global mass extinction event. We are pushing towards planetary boundaries that threaten human society as we know it, if not our survival as a species. Aid is a key component of the development engine that has brought us to this point. Is it ethical to help maintain such a destructive system?

Although aid is supposed to be the altruistic arm of development, for every $1 of aid that developing countries receive, they lose $24 in net outflows (Hickel, 2017). Overall, this overwhelming exploitation is clearly not helping the cause of justice. Arguably, charity exploits human compassion to prop up a failing model. Is aid being “wasted”? Raventos and Wark (2018) argue that charity is not a gift at all, and that the impossibility of reciprocity renders it a manifestation of class structure. Interestingly, this is a debate that goes back not only hundreds but thousands of years.

I remain intrigued by the idea that we can be both complicit and subversive. I recall similar assertions from Wendell Berry and Noam Chomsky. Roy looks for the opportunity presented and calls this an “ethics of doubleness.” She argues that such an approach is suitable “under conditions of extreme power where the ethical autonomy required to articulate disavowal and refusal might be lacking.” I wonder if that applies to humanitarian aid practitioners in the context of disaster recovery and risk reduction. Can one actually operate as an effective double agent and what is the end goal?

The proposer’s closing remarks

We cannot accept that working within a compromised system is not good enough – especially when there is no other alternative. Work in aid or not – you are complicit. You pay taxes to government systems that perpetuate uneven trade deals and cripple poor economies.

I quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr because he can serve as inspiration for those willing to fight for change, even when it seems insurmountable, even if it means engaging an oppressive regime. He envisioned a more just society – a paradigm shift – but did not deconstruct the US government institutions that had systematically oppressed people of color. He revised them, he made them evolve, he worked to introduce the Voting Rights Act; there is still much work to be done. Paradigm shifts start small, and they start with hope, a dream. Similarly, as humanitarians we work with institutions – perhaps our own governments, or those where we work – to make them more responsive to the needs, and rights, of the marginalized.

I will thus end with a story that inspires my hope: Canaan.

Canaan is now the third largest city in Haiti that you probably have never heard of. Its homes, schools and 500km of roads were all built since the 2010 earthquake, but not by the government, aid, or the private sector. In a display of unbelievable union amidst tragedy: 60,000 earthquake-affected families invested over $100 million of their own resources in new homes and infrastructure, building their vision of a more just and livable city. However,their progress and vision for a hopeful future is anything but assured. Canaan is a battleground to assert their rights to the city, to be equal citizens. They faced evictions– their homes bulldozed to rubble. They were bypassed by all government services – no water network, no paved roads, no public schools. They thus also are home to the largest persistence of cholera in the country (DINEPA 2017).

Through humanitarian aid, this third largest city now has the first public school, operated and maintained by the government, the first paved roads, its first public water network. This is not charity, this is their rights as citizens. Accurate geospatial mapping and population estimates generated by aid agencies with the community changed government budget allocations; the Ministry of Health vaccination rates plummeted with the recognition of Canaan’s population, so they developed new outreach programs. Grey splotches on city maps turned into detailed maps of neighborhoods. This geospatial information now informs extensions of government services – water, drainage, roads. Yes, more still needs to be done, but change has started. Such a progressive shift in policy toward upgrading and extending services to informal neighborhoods is not assured. Disasters can easily be the opposite – opportune moments for governments or the wealthy to clear the poor from their high value land.

Humanitarians can foster such progressive steps because of its direct connection to affected communities and its mandate to serve the most vulnerable. Double agents in governments will always have influences from the powerful to serve themselves; they thus also depend on humanitarians to balance public discourse and to help represent the most vulnerable.

The opposition’s closing remarks

So, does aid really work? I believe that alongside its somewhat limited achievements, it regrettably props up a socio-economic status quo – structurally based on scarcity thinking – that causes misery for billions of people. This is why I argue against the proposition.

Of course, many worthwhile programs in both disaster recovery and risk reduction have been undertaken under the auspices of aid. The question for me is not whether there is some good being done but whether root causes of the problem are actually being addressed. If not, is aid just a band-aid answer to inequality, poverty and disaster?

Michael Perenti asks, “why has poverty deepened while foreign aid and loans and investments have grown?” As he goes on to argue in The Face of Imperialism, rather than being ineffective, investments, loans and aid work exactly as intended – not for but against the interests of the communities they claim to serve. He claims that the ultimate purpose of the sector is to “serve the interests of global capital accumulation.”

Anna argues that “systemic political changes must be seen as part of our humanitarian goal”, and I certainly agree. But I wonder how many charitable organizations would sign up for that, and how many large donors (especially the Davos class)? Aid is arguably the tool of the wealthy (individuals, corporations and countries) to appear virtuous without system change. Some philanthropists go so far as to admit that charity helps to preserve wealth. This is not justice.

Let me offer an example of this – Bill Gates could lobby for LESS STRICT patent laws and allow millions of people in the global South to access generic medicines. But he chooses to vehemently lobby for laws that protect his source of wealth accumulation, perpetuating global health crises. And then, without recognizing the irony, he graciously provides aid to ameliorate the situation.

Turning to the microfinance model, we see that despite broad adoption and powerful anecdotes, the long-term impacts are not so positive. Bateman and Chang (2012) argue that “continued support for microfinance in international development policy circles cannot be divorced from its supreme serviceability to the neoliberal/globalisation agenda.” Critics argue that the model is rooted in “the myth of the heroic individual entrepreneur, the rags to riches fairytales.” And this rings true for much of the aid sector’s rhetoric and practice; it is patently ultra-compatible with the status quo.

There is no doubt that many organizations operating within neoliberal systems are doing some good for some people. Should they simply cease providing aid? Of course not. I think that Anna and I agree that “double agents” are important in bringing about change. But we need to be honest about the scale of change required to achieve a society where a provision for basic needs is a right rather than a privilege.

Tinkering at the edges of the status quo is not in the interests of those who should be of central importance to humanitarians – the most oppressed and marginalized.

The moderator’s closing remarks

THE ETHICS OF AID: REPLACING THE AID SYSTEM OR CHANGING IT FROM INSIDE?

Gonzalo Lizarralde

Aid faces several problems. But experts don’t agree on how to fix them.

Our two panellists—and almost all participants in our latest online debate—agree that aid needs a paradigm shift. But they don’t agree on how to reach this goal. Anna Konotchick, a senior officer in the field of housing and urban development, invites aid workers to recognize how their interventions can either disrupt unjust systems, or inadvertently be complicit with them. For her, institutions can have benevolent “double agents,” who support the most vulnerable people while promoting the emergence of more just social, economic, and political systems. Jason Von Mending, a scholar on a crusade to halt the dynamics of colonialism and disaster risk creation, argues that complying with the current system is no longer an option. According to him, oppressive systems demand more radical changes. His view was supported by 56% of voters, but it raises as many questions as it answers.

Given the environmental challenges we face, should aid be stopped? Can we do it in the name of helping the most vulnerable? Can poor countries and communities in the Global South—known to be the most vulnerable to environmental hazards—cope alone with the effects of climate change, mass displacement, and poverty?

Jason—along with some other scholars and activists mentioned in this debate—has argued that aid reproduces forms of colonialism, imperialism, and domination. In this sense, aid mechanisms are too embedded in neoliberal and capitalist practices to be fixed. But—surprisingly—these same observers often refer to data obtained or published byagencies or think tanks funded by aid. They also claim that the voices of the most vulnerable are often unheard in capitalist mechanisms, neoliberal policy, and geopolitics. But they fail to fully acknowledge that it is precisely charities and aid organizations that sometimes amplify the voices of the most neglected, oppressed and marginalized, an argument raised by Anna in her closing remarks. Finally, they claim that aid often resorts to Band-Aid solutions that fail to produce structural positive changes and tackle the root causes of vulnerability. But they stop short at suggesting what alternatives should be implemented. If the system is to be replaced, as more than half of voters seem to agree, what type of mechanisms or solution should replace it?

Is South-South aid, for instance, a viable alternative to the traditional North-South dynamics? Respondents are not sure, and point to examples in which patterns of domination and exploitation are reproduced withincountries of the Global South. Should governments avoid mingling with aid agendas? Again, participants are not sure, and point to examples in which deregulation of humanitarian aid has permitted abuses and has favoured partisan agendas. Is local aid better than the international sort? No. Local charities are typically constrained by political interests that hinder their capacity to produce radical change.

Anna has an answer to these questions. Attempting to fight the system is probably naïve, counterproductive, and simply overwhelming. Instead of getting rid of aid altogether, and risking throwing the baby out with the bathwater, she argues for the role of aid double-agents, who can be “complicit” and “subversive” at the same time. Yet her approach raises several questions too. Given that aid organizations and charities depend on sustained funding, can they actually enforce structural changes and contest the status quo that supports them? What about the moral implications of playing these double games? What ethical boundaries must be drawn when we are complicit with dodgy governments or institutions? Isn’t complicity a form of endorsement?

Both panellists agree that most aid workers are well-intentioned and virtuous individuals. But “the system” in which they work has many deficiencies. This said, I don’t think readers are convinced that the aid industry behaves as one single and homogeneous system. Instead, with the multitude of stakeholders engaged in the aid delivery process and their divergent interests, aid increasingly appears as a constellation of multiple systems and subsystems—many of which do not necessarily overlap and behave in dynamic ways. If multiple systems coexist, should we discard them all at once? Otherwise, which ones must be the target of subversion? Which ones are the source of complicity? How can system replacement, complicity, or subversion be achieved when we are dealing with moving targets and diverse contexts?

After ten days of debate, many questions remain to be answered. But raising them points to fruitful research agendas for social scientist and graduate students. These questions also challenge practitioners and aid workers, hopefully inviting them to improve their work. In this sense alone, our latest debate was a success. Its online impact was also strong. The debate page was visited more than 2000 times by over 1000 visitors from almost 40 countries. Over ten days, the debate gathered more than 90 votes and about 2500 engagements in social media. It was also enriched by 40 comments on the blog and many more on social media platforms.

I want to thank Jason and Anna for being insightful, thought-provoking panellists. I also want to acknowledge the contribution of Faten Kikano, who coordinated the event, as well as the valuable comments by Ekatherina Zhukova, Vanicka, Red Slider, Elsa Monsalve, Mahmood Fayazi, Gabriel, Tushar Pradhan, Mittul Vahanvati, Thomas, and other contributors on the blog.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the next Oeuvre Durable–i-Rec online debate!

The moderator

Gonzalo Lizarralde is a professor at the School of Architecture of Université de Montréal. His work focuses on the understanding of risk, low-cost housing, and informality in urban settings. He is interested in the causes and consequences of rapid urban transformation triggered by disasters, climate change, socio-political conflict, and economic instability. He holds the Université de Montréal’s Fayolle-Magil ConstructionChair in Architecture, Built Environment, and Sustainability. He is also the director of the IF Research Group (grif) and the Canadian Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Reconstruction Research Alliance (Oeuvre durable). He is a cofounder of i-Rec, an international network of specialists in disaster risk reduction and reconstruction. He is the author of The Invisible Houses: Rethinking and Designing Low-Cost Housing in Developing Countries and the co-author of Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability. He is a Member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada.

The organizers:

Faten Kikano faten.kikano@umontreal.ca

Gonzalo Lizarralde
gonzalo.lizarralde@umontreal.ca

Mahmood Fayazi (2014-2018)

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About Œuvre Durable

The Disaster Resilience and Sustainable Reconstruction Research Alliance (Œuvre Durable for its acronym in French) is a multi-university research team focused on vulnerability, resilience and sustainable reconstruction. It analyzes living environments through the theoretical and empirical approaches of vulnerability and resilience in the context of major disruptions, such as natural disasters, climate change, socio-political conflicts, and major threats to existing economic stability.

About i-Rec – Information and research for reconstruction

i-Rec is a web-based international network focused on the study of disaster risk reduction and reconstruction after disasters. i-Rec deals with information exchange between its members in order to contribute with knowledge related to building activities in situations of crisis, particularly disasters in developing countries.